Another intriguing death in Venice

By Neil JillettReviewJuly 7 2002

Wilful Behaviour
By Donna Leon
William Heinemann $29.95

Donna Leon has made death in Venice a keenly awaited annual entertainment. You can confidently turn to this 60-year-old American if you enjoy the work of Ruth Rendell and her alter ego Barbara Vine. Leon and Rendell are both straight novelists as much as crime writers, and their two coppers, Reg Wexford, the quiet Englishman, and Guido Brunetti, the even quieter Italian, are alike in the cynical liberalism with which they approach their work.

Although Leon has aroused little interest in her own country, she is very popular in Europe, especially Germany (where a Brunetti TV series has been made), and in Australia (if libraries' reserved lists for her books are any guide).

The cover of the 11th Brunetti mystery, Wilful Behaviour, is not embellished with any biographical information or quotations from the excellent reviews Leon has received. This non-publicity is a quaint way publishers have of announcing that an author has "arrived" or even has a cult following. More helpful sources record that Leon has taught English in China and the Middle East, is now on the staff of university near Venice, and has written the libretto of an opera set in a chicken coop.

Quotations from Mozart operas provide epigraphs for all her novels, and speculation with a friend about the best way to kill an unpleasant German conductor became the starting point of the first Brunetti novel, Death at La Fenice, published in 1992. Four years later La Fenice burnt down, and in Wilful Behaviour Brunetti glumly decides that Venice has become too corrupt and lazy to rebuild its gem of an opera house.");document.write("

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Contempt for Italy's bureaucratic and political sleaziness is among the ingredients that Leon freshens up and scatters through every novel. There is, for example, always at least one description of a meal that may or may not have some relevance to the plot. And no Leon mystery is complete without several references to the way Brunetti's wife, a teacher of English, worships Henry James. James's novella The Spoils of Poynton helps to shape Wilful Behaviour, and it is a measure of Leon's skill that she can pay such homage without appearing precious.

Wilful Behaviour is about a murder connected with art seized from Italian Jews during World War II. Like most of its predecessors, it is not big on detection. Although he is no fool, Brunetti is inclined to wait for lucky breaks that he does not always recognise. He avoids hard slog by relying on his aristocratic father-in-law to brief him on the activities of rich and infamous Venetians, and the voluptuous Signorina Elletra and her computer and network of contacts are infallible providers of information about everything from Swiss bank accounts to Mafia hit lists.

It's all very leisurely. It's also enriched by the subtlety with which established and new characters are drawn and interact, by the unobtrusive authority with which the physical and social aspects of Venice are presented, and by the beguiling grace of the storytelling. Leon and Brunetti are charmers. I look forward to welcoming them back this time next year.